How a Continental Hero Lives (1)
The evening sun slanted low, quietly washing over the fields as it declined.
Inside the rattling stagecoach, rushing along the road with unusual haste, there was a rare burst of noise.
“No, listen! The strongest person on the continent is Motala's Crusader, no matter what anyone says. When he comes striding up in armor that glows yellow even at midnight, I tell you, just imagining it makes my groin—”
The traveling peddler, reeking of strong liquor, shuddered as if he had truly seen something obscene.
The platinum-blonde woman nearby edged away with a look of disgust, and the man sitting opposite her shook his head and answered him.
“Sir, if you need to piss, wait until the next stop. Let’s keep the nonsense to a minimum.”
“What? Nonsense?”
“Yeah. If you’re going to talk about the strongest person in the world, you can’t leave out the Priest of Ella. I didn’t just imagine it; I saw it myself. Flames red as roses! Demon contractors couldn’t do a thing and went fluttering apart. Get it? Fluttering apart, I said.”
The man spread both arms wide, then folded them in again, exaggerating every word.
The peddler refused to back down and only raised his voice.
“Fluttering apart, my ass! What, are you talking out of your butt? Listen here, you brat. I saw it with my own eyes too. The crusaders were blazing bright and crashing straight into the demon contractors head-on with a bang—!”
“What kind of person turns into a cannonball?”
“I’m telling you, even worse than a cannonball!”
At the man’s sneer, the peddler, thoroughly riled, slapped the seat under him and leaned in.
“Listen. The crusaders pray to Motala, the god of justice. Then even a shabby old coach like this turns gold-bright! It becomes a battering ram strong enough to smash through a city gate.”
At last the peddler, too excited to stay seated, sprang up, only for the coach to jolt at that very moment.
“Wha—?!”
Drunk and off balance, he started to topple, but a middle-aged man with a heavy scar shot to his feet and caught him by the back of the neck, saving him from the fall.
He was the mercenary captain assigned to guard the stagecoach.
“Let’s keep the commotion in the coach to this level.”
His voice was thick and weighty enough that the peddler blinked as if the alcohol had drained out of him.
“Ah, sorry. I got carried away because of a big deal.”
“More importantly... you called my coach shabby just now. If you’ve got a complaint about my carriage, I could always throw you out of it right here.”
“Eek?! I-I was only speaking figuratively! T-that’s all I meant! It’s just that this is a carriage from a mercenary with real experience like you, sir. That’s very reassuring, isn’t it? Yes, absolutely!”
Seeing the peddler’s face stiffen in panic, the mercenary captain gave a snort and let him go.
Then, with a sudden wicked grin, he added, “I was joking too. More importantly, that was a fun conversation you were having. The strongest on the continent, huh? The Priest of Ella and the Crusader of Motala are both fine choices, but I’ve got a slightly different opinion.”
With the seasoned mercenary’s intervention, some passengers looked uneasy while others brightened with interest.
“The terror of the assassin guild rooted in the Empire’s shadows, Embers (Cinder), is truly beyond imagination.”
“Oh!”
“Embers (Cinder)! I’ve heard of them!”
In the stagecoach, where silence usually reigned, energy surged for once.
It was only a passing knot of travelers, and yet the captain’s vivid tale turned the place into a first-rate tavern.
“If you put it that way, then the mercenary king of the south would...”
“Ah, come on! You really don’t know! For sheer terror, the demon hunter who spends every day covered in bones...”
Their conversation was, no doubt, nothing more than gossip with scarcely a shred of objectivity.
But what did that matter?
In a place like this, where transient encounters gathered together, it was enough to laugh and talk carelessly.
Then a woman suddenly appeared.
“Do you really not have anything to say for yourself, sir?”
It was the same platinum-blonde woman who had earlier recoiled from the peddler.
Raul, who had been looking only out the window all this time, answered with a bored expression.
“I happen not to care.”
“Exactly, right?”
But somehow the woman misread his answer and boldly took the seat beside him.
“The magic tower, the Ella church... and yet those wonderful people have never actually fought among themselves, have they?”
Really, it’s childish, isn’t it?
The platinum-blonde woman’s eyes seemed to say that to Raul.
Raul let out a small sigh and was just about to answer when the same peddler from before cut in first.
“Hey, miss! Nothing good comes from hanging around a weak-looking guy like that, you know?”
The woman frowned at the sticky stink of alcohol rolling off him, but the peddler didn’t seem to care.
“No thanks. Go away.”
“Don’t be like that. Listen for a second. A man should be solid, like me or that mercenary over there. You’d know if you spent just one night with a guy like that. Speaking of which, how about it? Want a room at the next stop? I’ve got money.”
“Huh? You old bastard trying to die? Do I look like a whore to you, you half-witted drunk?”
The woman narrowed her eyes, and in an instant her killing intent bared itself.
And yet the drunk, after one hard pull on the bottle, remained oblivious.
“Huh? No? Then what’s the problem? Your face is pretty enough, so I’ll pay well. See this?”
Jingle.
What the potbellied peddler had taken from his pocket was a yellow-gold coin, gleaming brightly.
“Five gold. Five gold! At our trade company’s main office, that would be worth dozens of these. So? Feeling your eyes open up yet?”
But no matter how you looked at her, she was not the sort to be swayed by that.
“Open up my ass. Want me to tear your mouth from top to bottom and open it for you?”
Finally unable to hold herself back, the woman’s hand shot toward whatever she wore at her waist, but the mercenary captain with the fierce face stepped in front of her.
“I’ll apologize on his behalf, so stop there. And you too, sir, should choose your targets before spouting garbage. This lady is a silver plate adventurer.”
“S-silver plate?”
“Hold on! She looks that young?”
At the mercenary captain’s surprise confession, the stagecoach stirred again.
What shocked them was not the silver plate itself, but the fact that the woman, who looked little different from a girl, was in fact a bona fide mid-tier adventurer.
“If you say so, sir... well, then, sorry about that.”
Tch.
The peddler clicked his tongue, as if he had several lives to spare.
Everyone’s gaze turned to him.
Pathetic. Filthy. Something along those lines.
Among them, naturally, was Raul at the very back of the coach.
He had always thought attitudes toward women changed with the age, but to find someone this crude in a world where magic, holy power, sorcery, and aura all existed was almost impressive.
Then the peddler, who had been cowering hard, suddenly turned his eyes toward Raul.
His face twisted sharply.
“What, got a problem?”
At that moment, everyone in the coach frowned.
His intent was far too obvious.
He lacked the courage to say anything to the others, but he was only lashing out at the wiry man who had stayed apart from everyone else from the start.
He was clearly looking for someone to take his frustration out on.
“Why aren’t you answering? Got a problem, you bastard?”
When Raul met his hostility with silence, the peddler clearly took it for defiance and strode closer, rolling up his sleeves.
What broke the others’ expectations was Raul’s reply, after all this silence.
“I don’t have a problem. I do have a question.”
Raul and the peddler had a difference in build of at least one full head, if not more.
Yet even with such an opponent openly picking a fight, he didn’t panic or look away. He stayed as calm as ever.
The mercenary captain and the adventurer woman, who had been ready to intervene, found themselves looking intrigued instead.
“A question? Hahahaha! You look like you’d wet yourself if you faced a goblin, and you’ve got some nerve, huh? Hm?”
The peddler pantomimed loosening his fists, spitting a little as he spoke, as if he meant to crush Raul’s spirit outright.
But Raul’s answer only grew more matter-of-fact.
“Is that your personal experience?”
“You little shit! You think the mercenary over there and that girl are going to save your ass, don’t you! Well, this next stop is our Golden Axe Trading Company territory! Know what that means?”
“No idea.”
“What?! Y-you—damn it!”
The peddler’s face turned red.
Looking around, he found the others in the coach trying hard not to laugh as they watched him.
“I-I used to be a pretty famous adventurer in my day, you know!”
The situation had turned him into a clown.
Unable to endure it any longer, the peddler suddenly reached into his bundle and pulled something out.
Srrring—
With a cool metallic scrape, a blue-white curved blade came free.
At the sudden development, both the mercenary captain and the adventurer woman moved to act, but surprisingly Raul’s voice remained calm.
“You should put that away.”
“Pfft! Why? You scared once you saw a blade? You know how much this costs? A shrimp like you gets his throat cut in one stroke—”
The peddler’s voice rang out smugly.
But he could not finish the sentence.
Kuuuuung—!
In that instant, the coach suddenly lurched up into the air.
Kwaaaang!
Hiiiiih!
Along with the explosion, the horses pulling the coach screamed in pain, one after another.
“Th-this is bad! It’s an ambush! Mercenary unit, get it together and prepare for battle!”
The mercenary captain, now fully alert, rushed out of the coach and called to his companions riding in the second and third wagons.
Inside the coach, which had become a scene of chaos in an instant, Raul stood in complete composure and looked down at his feet.
“That’s why I told you to put it away. Tsk.”
At his feet lay the peddler, his shoulder impaled by the curved blade he himself had been holding.
“Kgh! B-blood!”
To make matters worse, the peddler tried to scream pathetically the moment he came to his senses.
Raul quickly slapped him across the face.
Smack!
“Shut up. You claim you were an adventurer and you’re making a scene over a few drops of blood?”
Only then did the adventurer woman, who had gotten back on her feet holding her head, look around and ask Raul, “Um, what happened?”
“I think it was a nighttime raid. I saw about five bandits through the broken window.”
“Five? Then the mercenaries should handle it, right?”
At Raul’s words, the woman brushed a hand over her chest as if relieved.
But Raul shook his head.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s necessarily the case.”
“Pardon? But there are dozens of mercenaries, and even if the bandits are armed, just five of them...”
“There are five living bandits. The problem is there seem to be quite a lot that aren’t living.”
“What?”
The woman looked lost.
The others in the coach, belatedly regaining their senses and listening to the exchange, wore much the same expression.
Then a scream came to resolve their confusion in the worst possible way.
Graaah!
“What was that?”
“Z-zombies!”
“If there are zombies, then don’t tell me there are demon contractors too?”
“W-why would a demon contractor be in the middle of the highway?”
The blood drained from the passengers’ faces.
While everyone else plunged into confusion, Raul alone continued looking outside and spoke.
“One of them is coming this way.”
Silence settled heavily at those words.
But by now, it was too late to wish for quiet.
Raul signaled the adventurer woman with a glance, then grabbed the back of the peddler’s neck as he lay bleeding on the floor.
“Gah! S-somebody help me!”
Shockingly, Raul’s bony arm, with not an ounce of visible muscle on it, lifted the potbellied peddler as if he weighed nothing.
“I’m doing this to save your life, so listen carefully. If you’ve ever made a living swinging a sword as an adventurer, you should know enough about zombies to understand their habits. Get up and stand over there. You draw its attention, and the adventurer here takes its head off. Got it?”
“N-no! I-I was never really an adventurer. I-I was just a peddler!”
“Shut up. Too late now. Go.”
As Raul hoisted him up, the peddler reflexively steadied himself on his feet.
Then Raul gave him a hard shove from behind.
“Aaaagh!”
With a pitiful scream, the peddler collapsed forward again, the curved blade still lodged in his shoulder.
But this time, what appeared before him was not a person.
Guaaaah!
A walking corpse came charging in, spitting dark, filthy saliva.
At that instant, a blue-white blade flashed from the adventurer woman’s hand, which had been hidden from view.
Tung-!
But the sound that rang out was not the clean slice of flesh.
“It’s hard!”
“Ah! Aaaagh!”
The dagger had stabbed into the back of the zombie’s neck.
After only a brief pause, the zombie shoved its head back into the coach and kept coming.
Unlike ordinary zombies, its body was hard like a corpse seized by postmortem rigidity.
And yet it moved freely, just as it had in life.
A grotesque, unfair power unique to zombies born from a demon contractor’s hand.
This was what it meant to gain the power of a demon.
“S-save me, p-please!”
The zombie the adventurer had failed to stop lunged straight for the fallen peddler.
Everyone winced, already picturing the brutal sight that was about to unfold.
But the next moment, an even less believable voice sounded.
“I’ll borrow this.”
As calmly as if selecting an item from a merchant’s stall and placing it in a shopping basket, the man pulled free the curved blade that had been lodged in the peddler’s shoulder.
Then he took the curved blade in a diagonal grip and placed it against the neck of the charging zombie.
There was no tremendous force in that sword, no intricate technique.
He had simply set it there.
Of course, the zombie’s stone-hard body should have crushed the blade again and gone for the peddler’s head.
Yet something changed.
Swish—!
That thin, unimpressive curved blade somehow sliced cleanly through the zombie’s neck as neatly as if it were cutting soft tofu.
Thud, rrrroll.
It fell so smoothly that the zombie’s head bounced several times across the overturned coach’s ceiling before rolling away in a circle.
“Hiiiek!?”
One passenger who met eyes with the severed head let out a shrill scream, but the others said nothing.
Because something even more astonishing than the zombie’s severed head had appeared before their eyes.
It was the pure white light stretching from the bend of the man’s arm to the tip of the blade as he held the curved sword.
A spotless authority nestled around both weapon and man, as if offering a blessing that would not scatter and fade.
“Light wrapping around the weapon?”
“If that’s an authority that strengthens a sacred weapon...”
“No way.”
One after another, their muttered guesses burst out like a litany, until someone finally asked in a trembling voice, “D-don’t tell me... were you a crusader of Motala?”
At the center of every gaze, Raul answered with a flat expression.
“Well... something like that.”
He could not bring himself to reveal his true identity as the continental hero.
Raul lifted the curved blade suffused with white light and headed calmly toward the outside of the coach.